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N the present day, we look back with a degree of wonder
on the belief in witchcraft, which may be said to have
formed an article of religious faith in every European
country throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth cen__ _■■ turies. A notion was universally entertained, that the
devil and subordinate evil spirits, in pursuance of their malevolent
ends, went about, sometimes in visible shape, seducing poor human
nature. To gain their wicked designs, they were supposed to tempt
men, but more particularly aged women, by conferring on them
supernatural powers ; as, for example, that of riding through the
air, and operating vengefully and secretly on the health and happi
ness of those against whom they had any real or imaginary cause of
offence. Such ‘trafficking with the powers of darkness,’ as it was
technically called, was witchcraft, and, according both to the letter
of Scripture and of the civil law, was a crime punishable with death.
Like all popular manias, the witchcraft delusion had its paroxysms.
No. 141.
!
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
It rose, existed for a time with great energy, then declined into
insignificance. What was exceedingly remarkable, the frenzy never
lacked victims : it followed the well-known law of supply and demandAs soon as witches were in request, they made their appearance.
Any severe denunciation, followed by a rigorous scrutiny, brought
them prominently into notice. Nor, what was still more curious,
did the newly discovered witches in all cases deny the accusations
against them. Many acknowledged, with a species of pride, that
they had entered into a compact with the devil. They seem, on
occasions, to have gloried in being the objects of so much interest,
and hastened to confess, although death at the stake or on thegallows was the consequence. It must be considered as in somedegree explanatory of this self-condemnation, that torture was always
at hand to enforce confession ; and as there was little chance, there
fore, of escape after accusation, the wish to die on the speediest
terms had probably no small share in inducing the alleged witches
to boast of their mysterious crimes. In the majority of cases, how
ever, there was stout denial; but this generally served no good
purpose, and we are painfully assured, that many thousands of
individuals, in almost every country, were sacrificed as victims to
the petty spite and vengeance of accusers. At the height of the
successive paroxysms, no one, whatever his rank or character, was
safe from an accusation of trafficking with evil spirits. If he lived
a profligate life, he was of course chargeable with the offence; if
he lived quietly and unobtrusively, and was seemingly pious in
character, he was only hypocritically concealing his diabolical prac
tices ; if he had acquired wealth somewhat rapidly, that was a sure
sign of his guilt ; and if he was poor, there was the greater reason
for believing that he was in league with the devil to become rich.
There was only one means of escaping suspicion, and that was to
become an accuser. The choice was before every man and woman,
of acting the part of accusers, or of being themselves accused. The
result may be anticipated. Perceiving the tremendous danger of
affecting to disbelieve witchcraft, people readily assumed the proper
degree of credulity ; and to mark their detestation of the crime, as
well as secure themselves from attack, they hastened to denounce
acquaintances and neighbours. Nothing could be more easy than
to do so in a manner perfectly satisfactory. Pretending to fall sick,
or to go into convulsions, or to have a strange pain in some part of
the body or limbs, people were doubtless bewitched ! Any sudden
storm at sea, causing the wreck of vessels, was another evidence
that witches were concerned ; and so far did these allegations
descend, that even so small a matter as a failure in churning milk
for butter, was a sure sign of diabolical agency. On the occasion
of every unforeseen catastrophe, therefore, or the occurrence of any
unaccountable malady, the question was immediately agitated : Who
was the witch ? Then was the time for querulous old men or women
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in the neighbourhood to tremble. Long suspected of carrying on a
correspondence with demons, they were seized and brought to trial.
The accusations, as is now clearly understood, were for the most part
spiteful, or wantonly mischievous. In making these charges and
testifying to them, children and young women appear to have in
many places excelled ; the probability being that, besides a mere
spirit of mischief, they enjoyed amusement from the consternation
they were able to produce.
Strange how all this prejudice, imposture, and cruelty should
have received the solemn sanction of the most learned and devout
men : clergymen of every degree, from popes to presbyters ; kings,
legislators, and judges ; and private citizens of every quality and
profession ! The folly, while it lasted, was complete.
It only excites the greater horror to know, that the belief in witch
craft—essentially mean and vulgar in all its details—has been a
reproach to religious profession ; and that, while seemingly founded
on scriptural authority, it really rested, in its main features, on the
visionary superstitions of the pagan world. Historians make it
clear to the understanding, that the popular fancy respecting the
bodily aspect of the great Spirit of Evil is drawn from the descrip
tion of satyrs in the heathen mythology—a malicious monster, with
the hide, horns, tail, and cloven feet of a beast of the field, which
roamed about in the dark or in retired places, performing idle and
wicked tricks, and undoing schemes of benevolence. Sometimes, as
was alleged, this great enemy of man assumed disguises that were
exceedingly difficult to penetrate. It is recorded by an author of
talent, that the devil once delivered a course of lectures on magic at
Salamanca, habited in a professor’s gown and wig. Even Luther
entertained similar notions about the fiend; and in fact thought so
meanly of him, as to believe that he could come by night and steal
nuts, and that he cracked them against the bedposts, for the solacement of his monkey-like appetite.
That the delusion originated, to a great degree, in a misconception
of the real purport of allusions to the so-called witchcraft in various
parts of the Old Testament, is now universally acknowledged. By
biblical critics, as we understand, the term translated witch, properly
signifies a person who by vile deceptions practised on popular
credulity, and by means of poisoning, accomplished certain wicked
designs. ‘Leaving,’ as Sir Walter Scott remarks, ‘the further
discussion of this dark and difficult question to those whose studies
have qualified them to give judgment on so obscure a subject, it so
far appears clear, that the Witch of Endor was not a being such as
those believed in by our ancestors, who could transform themselves
and others into the appearance of the lower animals, raise and allay
tempests, frequent the company and join the revels of evil spirits,
and, by their counsel and assistance, destroy human lives, and waste
the fruits of the earth, or perform feats of such magnitude as to
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alter the face of nature. The Witch of Endor was a mere fortune
teller, to whom, in despair of all aid or answer from the Almighty,
the unfortunate king of Israel had recourse in his despair, and by
whom, in some way or other, he obtained the awful certainty of his
own defeat and death. She was liable, indeed deservedly, to the
punishment of death, for intruding herself upon the task of the real
prophets, by whom the will of God was in that time regularly made
known. But her existence and her crimes can go no length to prove
the possibility that another class of witches, no otherwise resembling
her than as called by the same name, either existed at a more recent
period, or were liable to the same capital punishment, for a very
different and much more doubtful class of offences, which, however
odious, are nevertheless to be proved possible before they can be
received as a criminal charge.’ *
Originating in ignorance, a love of the marvellous, along with
the religious misconceptions to which we have referred, a belief in
witchcraft may be traced through the early ages of Christianity ; but
the modern prevalence of the delusion may be said to date from the
promulgation of an edict of Pope Innocent VIII. in 1484, declaring
witchcraft to be a crime punishable with death. This fixed the
subject deeply in the public mind, and the effect was deepened by
the prosecution of witches which followed. It is a curious law of
human nature, of which we have seen many modern illustrations,
that even crimes, real or imputed, when they excite much public
attention, tend to produce repetitions of themselves. In this way,
offences sometimes assume a character approaching that of epi
demical diseases. It was found, as has been remarked, that the
more energy there was displayed in seeking out and prosecuting
watches, the more apparent occasion for such prosecutions was
presented. In 1515, during the space of three months, 500 witches
w'ere burned in Geneva ; in a single year, in the diocese of Como,
in the north of Italy, 1000 were executed ; and it is related that,
altogether, more than 100,000 individuals perished in Germany
before the general mania terminated. In France, the belief in
witchcraft led to a remarkable variety of superstition, known in
French law as lycantliropy, or the transformation of a witch into a
wolf. It was currently believed by all classes, that witches assumed
at pleasure the wolfish form in order to work mischief—by ravaging
flocks of sheep. Many unfortunate persons, the victims of petty
prejudice, were tried and executed for this imaginary crime. At
length, by an edict of Louis XIV., all future proceedings on the
score of witchcraft were prohibited ; and from that time no more
was heard of village dames assuming the forms and habits of
wolves.
In England, to which we now turn, a belief in witchcraft was of
Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft.
4
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
as respectable antiquity as on the continent of Europe, and, aselsewhere, drew particular attention in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, at which period the public mind was deeply affected with
religious distractions. Witchcraft, though always penal, now became
the subject of the express statutes of Henry VII., 1541, Elizabeth,
1562, and also of James I. This last monarch, who, we shall
afterwards see, was a great witch-fancier while in Scotland, brought
with him to England a keen sense of the duty of finding out and
punishing all sorts of diablcrv. The act passed in the first year of
his reign in England defines the crime with a degree of minuteness
worthy of the adept from whose pen it undoubtedly proceeded.
‘Any one that shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation of any
evil or wicked spirit, or consult or covenant with, entertain or
employ, feed or reward any evil or wicked spirit, to or for any pur
pose; or take up any dead man, &c. &c. &c. ; such offenders, duly
and lawfully convicted and attainted, shall suffer death.’ We havehere witchcraft first distinctly made, of itself, a capital crime. Many
years had not passed away after the passing of this statute, ere the
delusion, which had heretofore committed but occasional and local
mischief, became an epidemical frenzy, devastating every corner of
England. Leaving out of sight single executions, we find such
wholesale murders as the following in abundance on the record : In
1612, twelve persons were condemned at once at Lancaster, and
many more in 1613, when the whole kingdom rang with the fame of
the ‘ Lancashire witches in 1622, six at York ; in 1634, seventeen
in Lancashire; in 1644, sixteen at Yarmouth; in 1645, fifteen at
Chelmsford; and in 1645 and 1646, sixty persons perished in Suffolk,
and nearly an equal number at the same time in Huntingdon.
These are but a few selected cases. The poor creatures who usually
composed these ill-fated bands are thus described by an able
observer : ‘ An old woman with a wrinkled face, a furred brow, a
hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a
scolding tongue, having a ragged coat on her back, a spindle in her
hand, and a dog by her side—a wretched, infirm, and impotent
creature, pelted and persecuted by all the neighbourhood, because
the farmer’s cart had stuck in the gateway, or some idle boy had
pretended to spit needles and pins for the sake of a holiday from
school or work ’—such were the poor unfortunates selected to undergo
the last tests and tortures sanctioned by the laws, and which tests
were of a nature so severe, that no one would have dreamed of
inflictifig them on the vilest of murderers. They were administered
by a class of wretches, who, with one Matthew Hopkins at their
head, sprung up in England in the middle of the seventeenth
century, and took the professional name of witch-finders. The
practices of the monster Hopkins, who, with his assistants, moved
from place to place in the regular and authorised pursuit of his
trade, will give a full idea of the tests referred to, as well as of the
s
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
horrible fruits of the witchcraft frenzy in general. From each town
which he visited, Hopkins exacted the stated fee of twenty shillings,
and in consideration thereof, he cleared the locality of all suspected
persons, bringing them to confession and the stake in the following
manner: He stripped them naked, shaved them, and thrust pins
into their bodies, to discover the witch’s mark; he wrapped them
in sheets, with the great toes and thumbs tied together, and dragged
them through ponds or rivers, when, if they sunk, it was held as a
sign that the baptismal element did not reject them, and they were
cleared; but if they floated, as they usually would do for a time,
they were then set down as guilty, and doomed. He kept them
fasting and awake, and sometimes incessantly walking, for twentyfour or forty-eight hours, as an inducement to confession ; and, in
short, practised on the accused such abominable cruelties, that they
were glad to escape from life by confession. If a witch could not
shed tears at command, said the further items of this wretch’s creed,
or if she hesitated at a single word in repeating the Lord’s Prayer,
she was in league with the Evil One. The results of these and
such-like tests were actually and universally admitted as evidence
by the administrators of the law, who, acting upon them, condemned
all such as had the amazing constancy to hold out against the
tortures inflicted. Few gave the courts that trouble. Butler has
described Hopkins in his Hudibras as one
‘ Fully empowered to treat about
Finding revolted witches out.
And has he not, within this year,
Hanged threescore of them in one shire?
Some only for not being drowned,
And some for sitting above ground.’
After he had murdered hundreds, and pursued his trade for many
years (from 1644 downwards), the tide of popular opinion finally
turned against Hopkins, and he was subjected, by a party of indig
nant experimenters, to his own favourite test of swimming. It is
said that he escaped with life, but from that time forth, he was never
heard of again.
A belief in witchcraft, however, still continued virulent in England,
and was argumentatively supported by grave and pious men. The
grounds of credibility do not seem to have been earnestly investi
gated,. Richard Baxter, who wrote in 1651, founds his opinion of
the truth of witchcraft on the fact, that many persons had been
tried and put to death for the crime. It did not occur to him to
inquire whether the imputed crime were well or ill founded. Such
was the loose reasoning that prevailed in England and elsewhere
in the seventeenth century. Witchcraft was a truth, because
everybody had acted upon the conviction of its being a truth 1
How has the progress of society, with the reign of peace and
6
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
♦•
good-will on earth,’ been retarded by this accommodating method
of argument!
It is an undoubted fact, however to be accounted for or palliated,
that during the troublous seventeenth century, prosecutions for
witchcraft were prominent in some proportion to the ascendency
of the Puritanic cause. While, as during the time of the Civil War
-and Commonwealth, the ruling powers acted under strong religious
impulses, the scriptural maxim of ‘ Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live,’ had the force of a commandment. In a time of indifference,
as in the reign of Charles II., rulers were disposed, so far as popular
prepossessions would permit, to let these poor old creatures cheaply
off. The era of the Long Parliament was that during which the
witch-mania attained its growth. Three thousand persons are said
to have perished during the continuance of the sittings of that body,
by legal executions, independently of summary deaths at the hands
of the mob. With the Restoration came a relaxation, but not a
cessation, of this severity. One noted case occurred in 1664, when
the enlightened and just Sir Matthew Hale tried and condemned
two women, Amy Dunny and Rose Callender, at Bury St Edmunds,
for bewitching children, and other similar offences. Some of the
items of the charge may be mentioned. Being capriciously refused
some herrings, which they desired to purchase, the two old women
expressed themselves in impatient language, and a child of the
herring-dealer soon afterwards fell ill—in consequence. A carter
•drove his wagon against the cottage of Amy Dunny, and drew from
her some not unnatural objurgations ; immediately after which, the
vehicle of the man stuck fast in a gate, without its wheels being
impeded by either of the posts, and the unfortunate Amy was
credited with the accident. Such accusations formed the burden
■of the ditty, in addition to the bewitching of the children. These
young accusers were produced in court, and, on being touched by
the old women, fell into fits. But on their eyes being covered, they
were thrown into the same convulsions by other persons, precisely
in the same way. In the face of this palpable proof of imposture,
and despite the general absurdity of the charges, Sir Matthew Hale
committed Amy Dunny and Rose Callender to the tender mercies
of the hangman. It is stated that the opinion of the learned Sir
Thomas Browne, who was accidentally present, had great weight
against the prisoners. He declared his belief that the children
were truly bewitched, and supported the possibility of such posses
sions by long and learned arguments, theological and metaphysical.
Yet Sir Matthew Hale was one of the wisest and best men of his
time, and Sir Thomas Browne had written an able work in exposition
of popular fallacies !
It was during the reign of Charles II. that many persons in high
station were found to express a doubt of the reality of witchcraft.
The first book treating the subject rationally, and trying to disprove
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�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
that the Scripture warranted either the crime or its punishment,
was that of Webster, published in 1677. It is amusing to observe
in this treatise the anxiety of the author to vindicate himself from
the charge of irreligion, which he foresaw would be brought against
him, for ‘ crossing the common stream of vulgar opinion.’ Chief
justices North and Holt, to their lasting credit, were the first
individuals occupying the high places of the law who had at once
the good sense and the courage to set their faces against the
continuance of this murderous delusion. In one case, by detecting’
a piece of gross imposture, Chief-justice North threw into disrepute,,
once for all, the trick ofpin-vomiting, one of the most striking and
convincing practices of the possessed. A male sorcerer stood at the
bar, and his supposed victim was in court, vomiting pins in profusion.
These pins were straight, a circumstance which made the greater
impression, as those commonly ejected in such cases were bent,
engendering frequently the suspicion of their having been previously
and purposely placed in the mouth. The chief-justice was led to
suspect something in this case by certain movements of the
bewitched woman ; and by closely cross-questioning one of her own
witnesses, he brought it fully out, that the woman placed pins in her
stomacher, and, by a dexterous dropping of her head in her simu
lated fits, picked up the articles for each successive ejection. The
man was found not guilty. The acquittal called forth such pointed
benedictions on the judge from a very old woman present, that he
was induced to ask the cause. ‘ O my lord,’ said she, ‘ twenty years
ago they would have hanged me for a witch if they could ; and now,
but for your lordship, they would have murdered my innocent son.’
The detected imposture in this case saved the accused. It was
under Holt’s justiceship, however, that the first acquittal is supposed
to have taken place, in despite of all evidence, and upon the fair
ground of the general absurdity of such a charge. In the case of
Mother Munnings, tried in 1694, the unfortunate prisoner would
assuredly have perished, had not Chief-justice Holt summed up in a
tone so decidedly adverse to the prosecution, that the verdict of Not
Guilty was called forth from the jury. In about ten other trials
before Holt, between the years 1694 and 1701, the result was the same,
through the same influences. It must be remembered, however, that
these were merely noted cases, in which the parties withstood all
preliminary inducements to confession, and came to the bar with the
plea of not guilty. About the same period—that is, during the latter
years of the seventeenth century—summary executions were still
common, in consequence of confessions extracted after the Hopkins
fashion, still too much in favour with the lower classes. The acquittals
mentioned only prove that the regular ministers of the law were
becoming too enlightened to countenance such barbarities. Cases
of possession, too, were latterly overlooked by the law, which would
have brought the parties concerned to a speedy end in earlier days,
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
even though they had done no injury to other people, and were
simply unfortunate enough to have made compacts with the demon
for the attainment of some purely personal advantages. For
example, in 1689, there occurred the famous case of a youth, named
Richard Dugdale, who sacrificed himself to the devil, on condition
of being made the best dancer in Lancashire. The dissenting clergy
took this youth under their charge, and a committee of them fasted
and prayed, publicly and almost incessantly, for a whole year, in
order to expel the dancing demon. The idea of this impostor leaping
for a twelvemonth, and playing fantastic tricks before these grave
divines, is extremely ludicrous. But the divines played tricks not
less fantastic. They became so contemptuously intimate with the
demon as to mock him on account of saltatory deficiencies. A
portion of their addresses to him on this score has been preserved,
but of too ridiculous a nature for quotation in these pages. If any
thing else than a mere impostor, it is probable that Dugdale was
affected with St Vitus's Dance ; and this is the more likely, as it
was after all a regular physician who brought his dancing to a close.
But the divines took care to claim the merit of the cure.
After the time of Holt, the ministers of the law went a step farther
in their course of improvement, and spared the accused in spite of
condemnatory verdicts. In 1711, Chief-justice Powell presided at a
trial where an old woman was pronounced guilty. The judge, who
had sneered openly at the whole proceedings, asked the jury if they
found the woman ‘guilty upon the indictment of conversing with the
devil in the shape of a cat.’ The reply was : ‘ We do find her guilty
of that but the question of the judge produced its intended effect
in casting ridicule on the whole charge, and the woman was
pardoned. An able writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review remarks,
after noticing this case: ‘Yet, frightful to think, after all this, in
1716, Mrs Hicks and her daughter, aged nine, were hanged at Hunt
ingdon for selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by
pulling off their stockings, and making a lather of soap ! With this
crowning atrocity, the catalogue of murders in England closes.’
And a long and a black catalogue it was. ‘ Barrington, in his obser
vations on the statute of Henry VI., docs not hesitate to estimate
the numbers of those put to death in England on this charge at
THIRTY THOUSAND !’
Notwithstanding that condemnations were no longer obtainable
after 1716, popular outrages on supposed witches continued to take
place in England for many years afterwards. On an occasion of
this kind, an aged female pauper was killed by a mob near Tring,
in Staffordshire ; and for the murder, one of the perpetrators was
tried and executed. The occurrence of such outrages having been
traced to the unrepealed statute of James I. against witchcraft, an
act was passed, in 1736 (10th George II. cap. 55), discharging all
legal proceedings on the ground of sorcery or witchcraft; and since
141
9
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
this period, prosecutions for following hidden arts have had no
higher aim than the punishing of a pretended skill in fortune
telling and other forms of practical knavery.
It has been said that James I. brought with him from Scotland
strong impressions on the subject of witchcraft, and, accordingly, we
now refer to the history of the delusion in that country. In the
reign of Queen Mary, the contemporary of Elizabeth, the public
mind in Scotland fell into the common frenzy, and an act was passed
by the Scottish parliament for the suppression and punishment of
witchcraft. In virtue of this law, great numbers were tried and exe
cuted. At this time, and subsequently, the Scottish witches were
nearly all aged women ; only a few men figured in the prosecutions.
On coming to exercise the functions of majesty, James made
numerous judicial investigations into alleged cases of witchcraft, and
derived a pleasure in questioning old women respecting their deal
ings with Satan. The depositions made at these formal inquests
are still preserved, and are among the most curious memorials of the
sixteenth century.
1 he witch mania in Scotland was, through these prosecutions,
brought to an extravagant height in the year 1591, when a large
number of unhappy beings were cruelly burned to death on the
Castle-hill of Edinburgh. About this period, some cases occurred
to shew that witchcraft was an art not confined to the vulgar. A
woman of high rank and family, Catherine Ross, Lady Fowlis, was
indicted at the instance of the king’s advocate for the practice of
witchcraft. On inquiry, it was clearly proved that this lady had
endeavoured, by the aid of witchcraft and poisons, to take away the
lives of three or more persons who stood between her and an object
she had at heart. She was desirous to make young Lady Fowlis
possessor of the property of Fowlis, and to marry her to the Laird
of Balnagown. Before this could be effected, Lady Fowlis had to
cut off her sons-in-law, Robert and Hector Munro, and the young
wife of Balnagown, besides several others. Having consulted with
witches, Lady Fowlis began her work by getting pictures of the
intended victims made in clay, which she hung up, and shot at with
arrows shod with flints of a particular kind, called elf arrow-heads.
No effect being thus produced, this really abandoned woman took
to poisoning ale and dishes, none of which cut off the proper per
sons, though others, who accidentally tasted them, lost their lives.
By the confession of some of the assistant hags, the purposes of
Lady Fowlis were discovered, and she was brought to trial; but a
local or provincial jury of dependants acquitted her. One of her
purposed victims, Hector Munro, was then tried in turn for con
spiring with witches against the life of his brother George. It was
proved that a curious ceremony had been practised to effect this
end. Hector, being sick, was carried abroad in blankets, and laid
in an open grave, on which his foster-mother ran the breadth o£
10
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
nine rigs, and, returning, was asked by the chief attendant witch
which she chose should live, Hector or George. She answered :
‘ Hector.’ George Munro did die soon afterwards, and Hector
recovered. The latter was also acquitted, by a provincial jury, on
his trial.
These disgraceful proceedings were not without their parallel in
other families of note of the day. Euphemia Macalzean, daughter
of an eminent judge, Lord Cliftonhall, was burned at the stake in
1591, having been convicted, if not of witchcraft, at least of a long
career of intercourse with pretenders to witchcraft, whom she
employed to remove obnoxious persons out of her way—tasks which
they accomplished by the very simple means of poisoning, where
they did accomplish them at all. The jury found this violent and
abandoned woman, for such she certainly was, guilty of participa
tion in the murder of her own godfather, of her husband’s nephew,
and another individual. They also found her guilty of having been
at the Wise Woman of Keith’s great witch-convention of North Ber
wick ; but every witch of the day was compelled to admit having
been there, out of compliment to the king, to whom it was a source
of agreeable terror to think himself of so much importance as to call
for a solemn convocation of the powers of evil to overthrow him.
Euphemia Macalzean was ‘ burnt in ashes, quick, to the death.’
This was a doom not assigned to the less guilty. Alluding to cases
of this latter class, a writer (already quoted) in the Foreign Quar
terly Review remarks : ‘ In the trials of Bessie Roy, of James Reid,
of Patrick Currie, of Isobel Grierson, and of Grizel Gardiner, the
charges are principally of taking off . and laying on diseases either
on men or cattle ; meetings with the devil in various shapes and
places ; raising and dismembering dead bodies for the purpose of
enchantments ; destroying crops ; scaring honest persons in the
shape of cats ; taking away women’s milk ; committing house
breaking and theft by means of enchantments ; and so on. South
running water, salt, rowan-tree, enchanted flints (probably elf arrow
heads), and doggerel verses, generally a translation of the Creed
or Lord’s Prayer, were the means employed for effecting a cure.’
Diseases, again, were laid on by forming pictures of clay or wax ;
by placing a dead hand, or some mutilated member, in the house of
the intended victim ; or by throwing enchanted articles at his door.
A good purpose did not save the witch ; intercourse with spirits in
any shape being the crime.
Of course, in the revelations of the various witches, inconsistencies
were abundant, and even plain and evident impossibilities were
frequently among the things averred. The sapient James, however,
in place of being led by these things to doubt the whole, was only
strengthened in his opinions, it being a maxim of his that the
witches were ‘ all extreme lyars.’ Other persons came to different
conclusions from the same premises; and before the close of James’s
II
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
reign, many men of sense began to weary of the torturings and
burnings that took place almost every day, in town or country, and
had done so for a period of thirty years (between 1590 and 1620).
Advocates now came forward to defend the accused, and in their
pleadings ventured even to arraign some of the received axioms of
4 Dzemonologie’ laid down by the king himself, in a book bearing
that name. The removal of James to England moderated, but did
not altogether stop, the witch prosecutions. After his death they
slackened more considerably. Only eight witchcraft cases are on
the record as having occurred between 1625 and 1640 in Scotland,
and in one of these cases, remarkable to tell, the accused escaped.
The mania, as it appears, was beginning to wear itself out.
As the spirit of puritanism gained strength, however, which it
■gradually did during the latter part of the reign of Charles I., the
partially cleared horizon became again overcast; and again was this
owing to ill-judged edicts, which, by indicating the belief of the
great and the educated in witchcraft, had the natural effect of
reviving the frenzy among the flexible populace. The General
Assembly was the body in fault on this occasion, and thenceforward
(the clergy were the great witch-hunters in Scotland. The Assembly
passed condemnatory acts in 1640, ’43, ’44, ’45, and ’49; and with
every successive act, the cases and convictions increased, with even
a deeper degree of attendant horrors than at any previous time.
‘ The old impossible and abominable fancies,’ says the Review
.formerly quoted, ‘ of the Malleus were revived. About thirty trials
appear on the record between 1649 and the Restoration, only one of
which seems to have terminated in an acquittal; while at a single
circuit, held at Glasgow, Stirling, and Ayr, in 1659, seventeen
persons were convicted and burnt for this crime.’ But it must be
remembered that the phrase, ‘ on the record,’ alludes only to justiciary
trials, which formed but a small proportion of the cases really tried.
The justiciary lists take no note of the commissions perpetually
given by the Privy-council to resident gentlemen and clergymen to
try and burn witches in their respective districts. These commissions
executed people over the whole country in multitudes. Wodrow,
Lamont, Mercer, and Whitelocke prove this but too satisfactorily.
The clergy continued, after the Restoration, to pursue these
imaginary criminals with a zeal altogether deplorable. The Jus
ticiary Court condemned twenty persons in the first year of Charles
II.’s reign (1661), and in one day of the same year the council issued
fourteen new provincial commissions, the aggregate doings of which
one shudders to guess at. To compute their condemnations would
be impossible, for victim after victim perished at the stake, unnamed
and unheard of. Morayshire became at this particular period the
■scene of a violent fit of the great moral frenzy, and some of the
most remarkable examinations, signalising the whole course of
•Scottish witchcraft, took place in that county. The details, though
12
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
occasionally ludicrous from their absurdity, are too horrible forr
narration in the present pages.
On the new government becoming thoroughly fixed in power,
this form of religious persecution—for in some degree such it was—
abated. From 1662, there is an interval of six years without a
single Justiciary trial for the crime of witchcraft, and one fellow was.
actually whipped for charging some person with it. After this
period, the dying embers of the delusion only burst out on occasions,
here and there, into a momentary flame. In 1678, several women
were condemned, ‘ on their own confession,’ says the Register; but
we suspect this only means, in reality, that one malicious beingmade voluntary admissions involving others, as must often havebeen the case, we fear, in these proceedings. Scattered cases took
place near the beginning of the eighteenth century—such as those
at Paisley in 1697, at Pittenweem in 1704, and at Spott about the
same time. It is curious, that as something like direct evidence
became necessary for condemnation, evidence did present itself, and
in the shape of possessed or enchanted young persons, who were
brought into court to play off their tricks. The most striking case
of this nature was that of Christian Shaw, a girl about eleven years,
old, and the daughter of Mr Shaw of Bargarran, in Renfrewshire.
This wretched girl, who seems to have been an accomplished
hypocrite, young as she was, quarrelled with a maid-servant, and, to.
be revenged, fell into convulsions, saw spirits, and, in short, feigned
herself bewitched. To sustain her story, she accused one person
after another, till not less than twenty were implicated, some of them
children of the ages of twelve and fourteen 1 They were tried on
the evidence of the girl, and five human beings perished through her
malicious impostures. It is remarkable that this very girl after
wards founded the thread manufacture in Renfrewshire. From a.
friend who had been in Holland, she learned some secrets in spin
ning, and, putting them skilfully in practice, she led the way to the
extensive operations carried on of late years in that department.
She became the wife of the minister of Kilmaurs, and, it is to be
hoped, had leisure and grace to repent of the wicked misapplication
in her youth of those talents which she undoubtedly possessed.
The last Justiciary trial for witchcraft in Scotland was in the case
of Elspeth Rule, who was convicted in 1708, and banished. A belief
in the crime was evidently expiring in the minds of the Scottish law
authorities; and the Lord Advocate, or public prosecutor, endea
voured to prevent the county courts from taking cognisance of the
subject. Notwithstanding his remonstrances, however, a case of
trial and execution for witchcraft was conducted by Captain David
Ross of Littledean, sheriff-depute of Sutherlandshire, in 1722. ‘The
victim,’ observes Sir Walter Scott, in his Letters on Demonology,
‘was an insane old woman belonging to the parish of Loth, who had
so little idea of her situation as to rejoice at the sight of the fire
13
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
which was destined to consume her. She had a daughter lame both
of hands and feet, a circumstance attributed to the witch’s having
been used to transform her into a pony, and get her shod by the
devil. It does not appear that any punishment was inflicted for this
cruel abuse of the law on the person of a creature so helpless.’ The
execution took place at Dornoch, and was the last that was inflicted
for witchcraft in Great Britain. Here may be said to end the
tragical annals of witchcraft in Scotland. The number of its
victims, from first to last, it would be difficult accurately to compute ;
but the black scroll would include, according to those who have
most attentively inquired into the subject, upwards of FOUR
thousand persons !
Having thus presented a historical sketch of witchcraft in England
and Scotland, we proceed to give an account of the mania as it
occurred in the North American colonies.
Carrying their religious opinions to an excess, and generally
ignorant of the economy of nature, the inhabitants of New England
yielded a remarkable credence to the popular superstition, and
carried it as far, in the way of judicial punishment, as it had gone
in any European nation. Their situation, perhaps, as colonists in
a pagan region helped to fan the flame of their fury against witches.
They regarded the Indians as worshippers of the devil, and practisers
of incantations ; they therefore felt it to be necessary to be doubly
on their guard, and to watch the first appearances of witchcraft
within the settlements. We learn from a respectable authority—
Chandler’s Criminal Trials—to which we are indebted for many
subsequent particulars, that the first suspicion of witchcraft among
the English in America was about the year 1645.
‘At Springfield, on the Connecticut river, several persons were
supposed to be under an evil hand ; but no one was convicted until
1650, when a poor wretch, Mary Oliver, after a long examination,
was brought to a confession of her guilt, but it does not appear
that she was executed. About the same time, three persons were
executed near Boston, all of whom at their death asserted their
innocence. In 1655, Anne Hibbins, the widow of a magistrate and
a man of note in Boston, was tried for this offence before the Court
of Assistants. The jury found her guilty, but the magistrates
refused to accept the verdict. The case was carried up to the
General Court, where the popular voice prevailed, and the prisoner
was executed. In 1662, at Hartford, Connecticut, a woman named
Greensmith confessed that she had been grossly familiar with a
demon, and she was executed. In 1669, Susanna Martin of Salis
bury was bound over to the court upon suspicion of witchcraft,
but escaped. She suffered death in 1692. In 1671, Elizabeth
Knap, who possessed ventriloquial powers, alarmed the people of
Groton ; but as her demon railed at the minister of the town, and
other persons of good character, the people would not believe him.
14
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
"Her fraud and imposture were soon discovered. In 1694, Philip
■Smith, a judge of the court, a military officer, and a representative
■of the town of Hadley, fancied himself under an evil hand, and
suspected an old woman, one of his neighbours, as the cause of his
sickness. She was dragged from her house by some young men,
who hung her up until she was nearly dead, then rolled her in
the snow, and at last buried her in it; but it happened that she
survived, and the melancholy man died. Trials for witchcraft out
of New England were not common. In 1665, Ralph Hall and his
wife were tried for the offence in New York, and acquitted. In
1660, in Queen’s County, Long Island, Mary Wright was suspected
of corresponding with the Author of Evil. She was arraigned, and
it was finally concluded to transport her to the General Court of
Massachusetts, “where charges of this kind were more common,
and the proofs necessary to support them better understood.” She
was accordingly arraigned there, and acquitted of witchcraft, but
was convicted of being a Quaker, and banished out of the jurisdic
tion. In Pennsylvania, when William Penn officiated as judge in
his new colony, two women, accused of witchcraft, were presented
by the grand-jury. Without treating the charge with contempt,
which the public mind would not have borne, he charged the jury
to bring them in guilty of being suspected of witchcraft, which
was not a crime that exposed them to the penalty of the law.
Notwithstanding the frequent instances of supposed witchcraft in
Massachusetts, no person had suffered death there on that account
for nearly thirty years after the execution of Anne Hibbins. The
sentence of this woman was disapproved of by many influential
men, and her fate probably prevented further prosecutions. But in
1685, a very circumstantial account of most of the cases above
mentioned was published, and many arguments were brought to
convince the country that they were no delusions or impostures, but
the effects of a familiarity between the devil and such as he found
fit for his instruments.’
Before going further with our account of these strange doings, it
is necessary to introduce to the reader a person who made himself
exceedingly prominent in exciting and keeping up the witchcraft
mania. This individual was the Rev. Cotton Mather—a noted
character in American biography.
Cotton Mather was descended from a respectable English family.
His grandfather and father were ministers of the Congregational
body, in which he also was destined to perform a distinguished
part. He was born at Boston in 1662 ; and his mother being a
daughter of John Cotton, an eminent nonconformist divine, he
received from him the name of Cotton. In his youth, he was con
sidered a prodigy of piety and devotion to study, and at an early
age he was raised to the ministry as assistant to his father. Later
in life, he did good service to the colony, as a zealous advocate of
15
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
popular rights during the struggles with the Stuarts and the estab1lishment of the revolution of 1688. Cotton Mather, however, is
chiefly remembered for his indefatigable zeal in seeking out and
getting witches tried and executed. This great work he felt to be
his mission : his mind was full of it. He seems to have considered
that in nothing could he do the commonwealth such good service
as in ridding it of traffickers with every order of demons. In order
to make known his opinion on the subject, he wrote various treatises,
expounding the nature of the invisible world, and all breathing an
earnest belief in the constant personal interference of Satan with
his ministerial prelections. Among his manuscripts, which have
been collected by the Massachusetts Historical Society, there is
a paper on which is endorsed the following curious record in his
handwriting: ‘■November 29, 1692.—While I was preaching at a
private fast (kept for a possessed young woman), on Mark ix. 28,
29, the devil in the damsel flew upon me, and tore the leaf, as it
is now torn, over against the text.’ For a fac-simile of this strange
record, we refer to Jared Sparks’s Life of Mather, from which we
derive the present account of this credulous and meddlesome
personage.
Several instances of alleged witchcraft, as has been seen, pre
pared the way for the great Salem tragedy, and these doubtless
stimulated the zeal of Cotton Mather. In 1688, a case occurred
which, being under his own eye, afforded materials for minute
investigation. The family of John Goodwin, a respectable and
devout man, living in the northern part of Boston, began to be
troubled with supernatural visitations. The children had all been
religiously educated, and were thought to be without guile. The
eldest was a girl of thirteen or fourteen years. She had a quarrel
with a laundress, whom she had charged with taking away some
of the family linen. The mother of the laundress was an Irish
woman, who, resenting the imputations on her daughter’s character,
gave the girl harsh language. Shortly afterwards, the girl, her
sister, and two brothers, complained of being tormented with
strange pains in different parts of their bodies, and these affections
were pronounced to be diabolical by the physicians who happened
to be consulted. ‘ One or two things were said to be very remark
able : all their complaints were in the daytime, and they slept
comfortably all night; they were struck dead at the sight of the
Assembly s Catechism, Cotton's Milk for Babes, and some other
good books ; but could read in Oxford jests, Popish and Quaker
books, and the Common Prayer, without any difficulty. Sometimes
they would be deaf, then dumb, then blind ; and sometimes all
these disorders together would come upon them. Their tongues
would be drawn down their throats, then pulled out upon their
chins. Their jaws, necks, shoulders, elbows, and all their joints,
would appear to be dislocated ; and they would make most piteous
16
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
Outcries of burnings, of being cut with knifes, beat, &c., and the
marks of wounds were afterwards to be seen. The ministers of
Boston and Charlestown kept a day of fasting and prayer at the
troubled house ; after which, the youngest child made no more
complaints. The others continuing to be afflicted, the magistrates
interposed, and the old woman was apprehended ; but upon exami
nation, would neither confess nor deny, and appeared to be dis
ordered in her senses.’ In order to satisfy themselves on this latter
point, the magistrates appointed several physicians ‘to examine her
very strictly, whether she was no way crazed in her intellectuals.’
These sage inquisitors do not appear to have been acquainted with
the fact, that a person may be deranged on one subject, and yet
sane on all others. They conversed with the woman a good deal,
and, finding that she gave connected replies, agreed that she was
in full possession of her mind. She was then found guilty of witch
craft, and sentenced to die. Cotton Mather eagerly seized on this
admirable opportunity of conversing with a legally condemned
witch. He paid many visits to the poor woman while she was in
prison, and was vastly edified with her communications. She
described her interviews with the Prince of Darkness, and her
attendance upon his meetings, with a clearness that seems to have
filled him with perfect delight. No sentiments of compassion
appear to have been excited in his mind towards this unfortunate
woman. He accompanied her to the scaffold, and rejoiced in
seeing what he considered justice done upon her. To the moment
of her death, she continued to declare that the children should not
be relieved—an unequivocal proof of disordered intellect.
Sure enough, the execution did not stay the disorder. The
children complained of suffering as much as before. Some of these
facts are amusing. Mather, in his simplicity, says : ‘ “ They were
often near drowning or burning themselves, and they often strangled
themselves with their neckcloths; but the providence of God still
ordered the seasonable succours of them that looked after them.”
On the least reproof of their parents, “ they would roar excessively.”
It usually took abundance of time to dress or undress them, through
the strange postures into which they would be twisted on purpose to
hinder it. “ If they were bidden to do a needless thing, such as to
rub a clean table, they were able to do it unmolested ; but if to do a
useful thing, as to rub a dirty table, they would presently, with many
torments, be made incapable.” Such a choice opportunity as this
family afforded for inquiry into the physiology of witchcraft, was not
to be lost. In order to inspect the specimen more at leisure, he had
the eldest daughter brought to his own house. He wished “to
confute the Sadducism of that debauched age,” and the girl took care
that the materials should not be wanting.’
A number of cunningly devised tricks were performed by this
artful young creature, all of which imposed on Cotton, who resolved
’7
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
to give an account of her case in a sermon. This publicity, how
ever, was by no means pleasing to the victim of witchcraft. She
made many attempts to prevent the preaching of the sermon,
threatening Mather with the vengeance of the spirits, till he was
almost out of patience, and exorcised them in Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew. All these were perfectly intelligible to them; ‘ but the
Indian languages they did not seem so well to understand.’
The whole particulars of this amusing case were published in a
regular form, and afterwards reprinted in London, by Richard
Baxter, who confidingly says in the preface : ‘ This great instance
comes with such convincing evidence, that he must be a very
obdurate Sadducee that will not believe it.’ We may here explain,
that, during the seventeenth century, ‘ Sadducee ’ was the term
usually employed to denote any one who did not come up to a
certain standard of belief, and was employed often towards persons
of high ecclesiastical position.
That it was feasible to doubt the validity of the pretended coniplaints of Goodwin’s children, and yet not be a Sadducee, was
afterwards manifest. These young persons had, from first to last,
carried on a system of imposture; and the idea of doing so had been
suggested by the relation of tales of English witchcraft. ‘ Glanvil,’
observes Mr Chandler, ‘ not many years before, published his witch
stories in England ; Perkins and other nonconformists were earlier;
but the great authority was that of Sir Matthew Hale, revered in
New England, not only for his knowledge in the law, but for his
gravity and piety. The trial of the witches in Suffolk was published
in 1684. All these books were in New England ; and the con
formity between the behaviour of Goodwin’s children, and most of
the supposed bewitched at Salem, and the behaviour of those in
England, is so exact, as to leave no room to doubt the stories had
been read by the New England persons themselves, or had been
told to them by others who had read them.’
We now come to the great witch-battue at Salem, *a village in
Massachusetts, which at present forms a part of the town of
Danvers. The commencement of the Salem witchcraft was in
February 1692, and broke out in the family of Samuel Parris, the
minister of the village. There had been a bitter strife between Mr
Parris and a portion of his people; and the ‘ very active part he took
in the prosecutions for witchcraft, has been justly attributed, not less
to motives of revenge, than to a blind zeal in the performance of
what he considered his duty. A daughter of Mr Parris, nine years
of age, his niece, a girl of less than twelve, and two other girls in
the neighbourhood, began to make the same sort of complaints that
Goodwin’s children had made two or three years before. The
physicians, having no other way of accounting for their disorder,
pronounced them bewitched. An Indian woman, who had been
brought into the country from New Spain, and then lived with Mr
18
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
Parris, tried some experiments, which she pretended to have been
used to in her own country, in order to find out the witch. This
coming to the children’s knowledge, they cried out upon the poor
Indian as appearing to them, pinching, pricking, and tormenting
them; and they fell into fits. Tituba, the Indian, acknowledged
that she had learned how to find out a witch, but denied that she
was one herself. Several private fasts were kept at the minister’s
house, and several, more public, by the w’hole village ; and then
a general fast through the colony, to implore God to rebuke Satan.
The great notice taken of the children, together with the pity and
compassion of the persons by whom they were visited, not only
tended to confirm them in their conduct, but to draw others into the
like. Accordingly, the number of the sufferers soon increased ; and
among them, there were two or three women, and some girls old
enough for witnesses. These, too, had their fits, and, when in them,
cried out, not only against Tituba, but against Sarah Osburn,
a melancholy, distracted old woman, and Sarah Good, another old
woman, who was bedrid. Tituba having, as it is alleged, been
scourged by her master, at length confessed herself a witch, and that
the two old women were her confederates. The three were then
committed to prison ; and Tituba, upon search, was found to have
scars upon her back, which were called the devil’s marks. This
took place on the 1st of March. About three weeks afterwards, two
other women, of good character, and church members, Corey and
Nurse, were complained of, and brought to an examination ; on
which these children fell into fits, and the mother of one of them,
the wife of Thomas Putman, joined with the children, and complained
of Nurse as tormenting her : she made most terrible shrieks, to the
amazement of all the neighbourhood. The women, notwithstanding
they denied everything, were sent to prison ; and such was the
infatuation, that a child of Sarah Good, about four or five years old,
was also committed, being charged with biting some of the afflicted,
who shewed the print.of small teeth on their arms. On April 3d, Mr
Parris took for his text : “ Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of
you is a devil.” Sarah Cloyse, supposing it to be occasioned by
Nurse’s case, who was her sister, went out of meeting, and she was
thereupon complained of for a witch, examined, and committed.
Elizabeth Proctor was charged about the same time ; her husband
accompanied her to her examination, but it cost him his life. Some
of the afflicted cried out upon him also, and they were both com
mitted to prison.
‘ The subject acquired new interest; and, to examine Sarah
Cloyse and Elizabeth Proctor, the deputy-governor and five other
magistrates came to Salem. It was a great day ; several ministers
were present. Parris officiated, and, by his own record, it is plain
that he himself elicited every accusation. His first witness, John,
the Indian servant, husband to Tituba, was rebuked by Sarah
19
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
Cloyse, as a grievous liar. Abigail Williams, the niece of Parris,
was also at hand with her tales : the prisoner had been at the
witches’ sacrament. Struck with horror, Sarah Cloyse asked for
water, and sank down “in a dying fainting-fit.” “Her spirit,”
shouted the band of the afflicted, “is gone to prison to her sister
Nurse.” Against Elizabeth Proctor, the niece of Parris told stories
yet more foolish than false : the prisoner had invited her to sign
the devil’s book. “ Dear child,” exclaimed the accused in her
agony, “it is not so. There is another judgment, dear child and
her accusers, turning towards her husband, declared that he too
was a wizard. All three were committed.
‘ No wonder that the whole country was in a consternation, when
persons of sober lives and unblemished characters were committed
to prison upon such evidence. Nobody was safe. The most
effectual way to prevent an accusation was to become an accuser ;
and, accordingly, the number of the afflicted increased every day,
and the number of the accused in proportion. As yet no one had
confessed ; but at length Deliverance Hobbs owned everything that
was asked of her, and was left unharmed. Then it was that the
monstrous doctrine seems to have been first thought of, that “ the
gallows was to be set up, not for those who professed themselves
witches, but for those who rebuked the delusion not for the guilty,
but for the unbelieving. As might be expected, confessions rose
in importance. They were the avenue of safety. Examinations
and commitments were of daily occurrence, and the whole com
munity was in a state of terror and alarm, which can more easily
be imagined than described. The purest life, the strictest integrity,
the most solemn asseverations of innocence, were of no avail.
Husband was torn from wife, parents from children, brother from
sister, and, in some cases, the unhappy victims saw in their accusers
their nearest and dearest friends : in one instance, a wife and a
daughter accused the husband and father to save themselves ; and,
in another, a daughter seven years old testified against her mother.
‘ The manner in which the examinations were conducted was
eminently calculated to increase the number of the accused and of
the accusers. Mr Parris was present at all of them, and was overofficious, putting leading questions, and artfully entrapping the
witnesses into contradictions, by which they became confused, and
were eagerly cried out upon as guilty of the offence. The appear
ance of the persons accused was also carefully noted by the magis
trates, and was used in evidence against them at their trials. “As
to the method which the Salem justices do take,” says a contem
porary writer, “it is truly this: A warrant being issued out to
apprehend the persons that are charged and complained of by the
afflicted children, as they are called; said persons are brought
before the justices, the afflicted being present. The justices ask
the apprehended why they afflict these poor children, to which the
20
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
apprehended answer, they do not afflict them. The justices order
the apprehended to look upon the said children, which accordingly
they do ; and at the time of that look (I dare not say by that look,
as the Salem gentlemen do), the afflicted are cast into a fit. The
apprehended are then blinded, and ordered to touch the afflicted ;
and at that touch, though not by that touch (as above), the afflicted
do ordinarily come out of their fits. The afflicted persons then
declare and affirm that the apprehended have afflicted them ; upon
which the apprehended persons, though of never so good repute,
are forthwith committed to prison, on suspicion of witchcraft.”’
Cotton Mather was in his element during these transactions. He
recommended the magistrates to study his works on Witchcraft, and
to use all the enginery in their power to purify the land from the
wicked practices of necromancy. The authorities scarcely needed
these incitements. They carried on their examinations with much
vigour, and the manner in which they did so affords one a melancholy
insight into the minutiae of the delusion.
While various preliminary examinations had been made by the
authorities, the jails were gradually filling with persons awaiting
the commencement of the trials, which could not take place for
several months, in consequence of there being a kind of suspension
of the chartered rights of the colony. In May, a new royal charter
arrived, along with Sir William Phipps as governor—a person, as
it would appear, unfitted for this important trust ; he was a protege
of the Mathers, inclined to walk by their counsel, and a firm believer
in witchcraft. Finding on his arrival that the prisons were full of
victims charged with this offence, and urged on by the seeming
urgency of the occasion, he took it upon him to issue a special
commission, constituting the persons named in it a court to act
in and for the counties of Suffolk, Essex, and Middlesex. This
court, beyond all question an illegal tribunal, because the governor
had no shadow of authority to constitute it, consisted of seven
judges. ‘At the opening of the court at Salem, on the 2d of June
1692, the commission of the governor was published, and the oath
of office was administered to Thomas Newton as attorney-general,
and to Stephen Sewall as clerk. The general course of proceedings
at these trials was entirely consistent with the character of the
court and the nature of their business. After pleading to the indict
ment, if the prisoner denied his guilt, the afflicted persons were
first brought into court and sworn as to who afflicted them. Then
the confessors, that is, those who had voluntarily acknowledged
themselves witches, were called upon to tell what they knew of the
accused. Proclamation was then made for all who could give any
testimony, however foreign to the charge, to come into court, and
whatever any one volunteered to tell, was admitted as evidence.
The next process was to search for “ witch-marks,” the doctrine
being, that the devil affixed his mark to those in alliance with him,
21
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
and that this point on the body became callous and dead. This
duty was performed by a jury of the same sex, who made a parti
cular return of the appearance of the body, and whether there was
any preternatural excrescence. A wart or a mole on the body of
a prisoner was often conclusive against him, when the evidence
was otherwise doubtful. These examinations in the case of women
were made by a jury of matrons, aided by a medical man as fore
man. They were very minute, and, in some respects, the most cruel
and disgusting part of the proceedings. The unhappy prisoners
were not only subjected to the mortification of a gross exposure
before the jury of examination, but when any witch-mark was found,
it was punctured with pins, to ascertain whether there was any
feeling. There were usually several examinations of the same
individual. In one instance, a woman was examined at ten o’clock
in the morning, and at four o’clock in the afternoon the jury certified
that they had again examined her, and that her breast, which “ in
the morning search appeared to us very full, the nibblis fresh and
starting, now at this search all lancke and pendent.” Of the nine
women who were on this jury, but one could write her name; the
remainder made their marks.
‘Evidence was also received respecting the appearance of the
accused at the preliminary examinations ; and the various signs of
witchcraft which then appeared were detailed with much particularity.
It was a great sign of witchcraft to make an error in the Lord’s
Prayer, which the accused on those occasions were required to
repeat, and if they made a single error, it was brought up at their
trial as evidence against them. Thus, one repeated the prayer
correctly in every particular, excepting that she said “ deliver us from
all evil,” “ which was looked upon as if she prayed against what she
was now justly under.” Upon making another attempt, she said
“hallowed be thy. name,” instead of “hallowed be thy name and
this “ was counted a depraving the words, as signifying to make
void, and so a curse, rather than a prayer.” The appearance of the
accused, and of those supposed to be bewitched, also had an effect
against the prisoner. Sometimes the witnesses were struck dumb
for a long time; at others, they would fall into terrible fits, and were
insensible to the touch of all but the accused, who, they declared,
tormented them. Sometimes the accused were ordered to look on
the afflicted, when the latter would be immediately thrown into fits.
It was thought that an invisible and impalpable fluid darted from
the eyes of the witch, and penetrated the brain of the bewitched.
A touch by the witch attracted back the malignant fluid, and the
sufferers recovered their senses. Another sign of witchcraft, of great
consideration, was an inability of the accused to shed tears.
‘ There was one species of evidence which was of great effect in
these prosecutions, and which it was impossible to rebut. Witnesses
were allowed to testify to certain acts of the accused, when the latter
22
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
were not present in the body ; that they were tormented by appari
tions or spectres of the accused, which pinched them, robbed them
of their goods, caused them to languish and pine away, pricked them ;
and they produced the identical pins which were used for this purpose?
The first session of the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer was
held in June 1692, and at this time one trial only took place. ‘The
victim selected for this occasion was Bridget Bishop or Oliver, a
poor and friendless old woman, who had been charged with witch
craft twenty years before. The indictment against her set forth,
that on the 19th day of April, and at divers other days and times,
as well before as after, she used, practised, and exercised certain
detestable arts, called witchcrafts and sorceries, at and within the
township of Salem, in, upon, and against one Mercy Lewis, of Salem
village; by which wicked arts, the said Mercy Lewis “ was hurt,
tortured, afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted, and tormented, against
the peace of our sovereign lord and lady, the king and queen, and
against the form of the statute in that case made and provided.”
There were four other indictments against the prisoner for the same
crime in afflicting other persons. On her arraignment, she pleaded
not guilty.
‘ The fact that the crime had been committed, or that certain
persons were bewitched by some one, was considered too notorious
to require much proof; and to fix the crime on the prisoner, the first
testimony adduced was that of the persons supposed to be bewitched.
Several of them testified, that the shape of the prisoner sometimes
very grievously pinched, choked, bit, and afflicted them, urging them
to write their names in a book, which the said spectre called “ ours.”
One of them further testified, that the shape of the prisoner, with
another, one day took her from her wheel, and, carrying her to the
river-side, threatened there to drown her, if she did not sign the
book. Others testified that the said shape did in her threats brag
to them that she had been the death of sundry persons, then by her
named. Another testified to the apparition of ghosts to the spectre
of the prisoner, crying out : “You murdered us.” “About the truth
whereof,” adds the reporter of this trial, “ there was, in the matter of
fact, but too much suspicion?”
The evidence given by John Louder on this ridiculous trial may
be taken as a fair sample of the nonsense which was uttered on the
occasion. ‘John Louder testified, that, upon some little controversy
with Bishop about her fowls, going well to bed, he awoke in the
night by moonlight, and saw clearly the likeness of this woman
grievously oppressing him ; in which miserable condition she held
him, unable to help himself, till near day. He told Bishop of this ;
but she utterly denied it, and threatened him very much. Quickly
after this, being at home on a Lord’s-day, with the doors shut about
him, he saw a black pig approach him, which endeavouring to kick,
it vanished away. Immediately after, sitting down, he saw a black
23
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
thing jump in at the window, and come and stand before him. The
body was like that of a monkey, the feet like a cock’s, but the face,
much like a man’s. Ide being so extremely affrighted that he could
not speak, this monster spoke to him, and said : “ I am a messenger
sent unto you, for I understand that you are in some trouble of
mind ; and if you will be ruled by me, you shall want for nothing in
this world.” Whereupon he endeavoured to clap his hands upon it,
but he could feel no substance, and it jumped out of the window
again, but immediately came in by the porch, though the doors were
shut, and said : “ You had better take my counsel.” He then struck
at it with a stick, but struck only the groundsel, and broke the stick.
The arm with which he struck was presently disabled, and it
vanished away. He presently went out at the back-door, and spied
this Bishop, in her orchard, going toward her house : but he had not
power to set one foot forward unto her. Whereupon, returning into
the house, he was immediately accosted by the monster he had seen
before, which goblin was going to fly at him ; whereat he cried out :
“ The whole armour of God be between me and you !” So it sprung
back, and flew over the apple-tree, shaking many apples off the tree
in its flying over. At its leap, it flung dirt with its feet against the
stomach of the man ; whereon he was then struck dumb, and so
continued for three days together. “ Upon the producing of this
testimony,” says Cotton Mather, “ Bishop denied that she knew this
deponent. Yet their two orchards joined, and they had often had
their little quarrels for some years together.’”
All this trash being gravely listened to and approved of by the
court, it was resolved, as a final step in the procedure, to have the
prisoner examined by a jury of women. This was accordingly
done ; the matrons reported that they found a preternatural ‘ tet ’
upon her body, and on making a second examination within three
or four hours, there was no such thing to be seen.
‘ The poor woman undertook to explain the circumstances which
had been related against her, but she was constantly harassed ; and
becoming confused, she apparently prevaricated somewhat, and all
she said made against her. She seems to have been a woman of
violent temper, who had lived on ill terms with her neighbours for
many years, and who had long had the reputation of being a witch.
Those of her neighbours who had suffered from her uncomfortable
disposition, were nothing loath to attribute all their misfortunes to
her ; and she thus stood little chance of a fair trial.
‘ She was convicted, and sentenced to be hanged, and was
remanded to prison to await her doom. “As she was under a
guard, passing by the great and spacious meeting-house of Salem”
—Cotton Mather relates this—“ she gave a look towards the house ;
and immediately a demon, invisibly entering the meeting-house,
tore down a part of it ; so that though there were no person to be
seen there, yet the people at the noise running in found a board,
34
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
which was strongly fastened with several nails, transported unto
another quarter of the house.” She was executed on the ioth of
June, solemnly protesting her innocence to the last.
‘After the trial and condemnation of Bridget Bishop, the court
adjourned to the 30th of June; and the governor and council
thought proper, in the meantime, to take the opinion of several
ministers upon the state of things as they then stood. Their return,
understood to have been drawn up by Cotton Mather, was as follows ;
“ 1. The afflicted state of our poor neighbours, that are now
suffering by molestations from the invisible world, we apprehend so
deplorable, that we think their condition calls for the utmost help
of all persons in their several capacities.
“2. We cannot but with all thankfulness acknowledge the success
which the merciful God has given to the sedulous and assiduous
endeavours of our honourable rulers, to defeat the abominable witch
crafts which have been committed in the country ; humbly praying,
that the discovery of those mysterious and mischievous wickednesses
may be perfected.
“3. We judge that in the prosecution of these and all such witch
crafts, there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, lest
by too much credulity for things received only upon the devil’s
authority, there be a door opened for a long train of miserable con
sequences, and Satan get an advantage over us ; for we should not
be ignorant of his devices.
“4. As in complaints upon witchcrafts there may be matters of
inquiry which do not amount unto matters of presumption, and
there may be matters of presumption which yet may not be matters
of conviction, so it is necessary that all proceedings thereabout be
managed with an exceeding tenderness towards those that mav be
complained of, especially if they have been persons formerly of an
unblemished reputation.
“5. When the first inquiry is made into the circumstances of
such as may lie under the just suspicion of witchcrafts, we could
wish that there may be admitted as little as possible of such noise,
company, and openness, as may too hastily expose them that are
examined; and that there may be nothing used as a test for the
trial of the suspected, the lawfulness whereof may be doubted by
the people of God ; but that the directions given by such judicious
writers as Perkins and Bernard may be observed.
“6. Presumptions whereupon persons may be committed, and,
much more, convictions whereupon persons may be condemned as
guilty of witchcrafts, ought certainly to be more considerable than
barely the accused person’s being represented by a spectre unto the
afflicted ; inasmuch as it is an undoubted and a notorious thing,
that a demon may, by God’s permission, appear, even to ill purposes,
in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous man. Nor can we
esteem alterations made in the sufferers, by a look or touch of the
?5
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
accused, to be an infallible evidence of guilt, but frequently liable to
be abused by the devil’s legerdemain.
“ 7. We know not whether some remarkable affronts given the
devils, by our disbelieving those testimonies whose whole force and
strength is from them alone, may not put a period unto the progress
of the dreadful calamity begun upon us, in the accusation of so
many persons, whereof some, we hope, are yet clear from the great
transgression laid to their charge.
“8. Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly recommend unto the
government, the speedy and vigorous prosecutions of such as have
rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the directions given in
the laws of God, and the wholesome statutes of the English nation,
for the detection of witchcrafts.” ’
These suggestions met with due attention. Accordingly, when
the court again met on the 30th of June, five women were brought
to trial—namely, Sarah Good and Rebecca Nurse, of Salem village,
Susannah Martin of Amesbury’, Elizabeth How of Ipswich, and
Sarah Wildes of Topsfield. They were condemned, and executed
on the 19th of July. There was no difficulty with any but Rebecca
Nurse. She was a member of the Church, and of a good character ;
as to her, the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty. The accusers
made a great clamour, and the court expressed much dissatisfaction.
The jury again retired, and this time brought in a verdict of guilty.
On the next communion-day, the poor woman, declaring her
innocence, was taken in chains to the meeting-house, to be formally
excommunicated. She was hanged with the rest on the 19th of
July. In August, six persons were tried, and condemned to be
executed ; one of the unhappy prisoners on this occasion being a
person named Willard, who had formerly been employed to detect
witchcraft, but had latterly revolted at the office, and expressed a
disbelief of the crime.
The next trial was that of George.Burroughs, a person of educa
tion, who had formerly been a minister in Salem village. ‘ His trial
and condemnation form one of the darkest transactions which the
annals of crime in America present. There were at the time vague
hints, which became at length positive assertions, of difficulties
between him and Parris, which render his fate a terrible commentary
■on the power thrown into the hands of a few designing men, by the
excited state of public feeling. Moreover, he boldly denied that
there was or could be such a thing as witchcraft in the current sense
of the term. He was among the first who were accused, and, after
lying in jail several months, he was brought to trial on the 5th of
August. The indictment set forth that the prisoner, on the 9th day
of May, and divers other days, as well before as after, “certain
detestable arts, called witchcraft and sorceries, wickedly and
feloniously hath used, practised, and exercised, at and within the
township of Salem, in the county of Essex aforesaid, in, upon, and
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
against one Anne Putnam, single woman, by which said wicked arts,
the said Anne Putnam, the 9th day of May, and divers other days
and times, as well before as after, was and is tortured, afflicted,
pined, consumed, wasted, and tormented, against the peace of our
sovereign lord and lady, the king and queen, and against the form
■of the statute in that case made and provided.”'
There were three other indictments against the prisoner, to all of
which, on his arraignment, he pleaded not guilty. The evidence
against him was of a very loose and general nature, consisting, in a
great measure, of things said and done by his shape or apparition,
when he was not present as to the body. The following is a
condensation of the absurd evidence of two of the witnesses :
Anne Putnam said : ‘ On the 9th of May 1692, in the evening, I
saw the apparition of George Burroughs, who grievously tortured
me, and urged me to write in his book ; which I refused. He then
told me that his two first wives would appear to me presently, and
tell me a great many lies ; but I should not believe them. Immedi
ately there appeared to me the forms of two women in winding
sheets, and napkins about their heads, at which I was greatly
affrighted. They turned their faces towards Mr Burroughs, and
looked very red and angry at him, telling him that he had been a
cruel man to them, and that their blood cried for vengeance against
him. They also told him they should be clothed with white robes
in heaven, when he should be cast into hell. Immediately he
vanished away; and as soon as he was gone, the two women turned
their faces towards me, looking as pale as a white wall. They said
they were Mr Burroughs’ first wives, and that he had murdered them.
One of them said she was his first wife, and he stabbed her under
the left arm, and put a piece of sealing-wax on the wound ; and she
pulled aside the winding-sheet, and shewed me the place; and also
told me that she was in the house where Mr Parris now lives, when it
was done. The other told me that Mr Burroughs and his present
wife killed her in the vessel as she was coming to see her friends,
because they would have one another ; and they both charged me
that I should tell these things to the magistrates before Mr
Burroughs’ face, and, if he did not own them, they did not know
but they should appear there this morning. Mrs Lawson and her
daughter also appeared to me, and told me that Mr Burroughs
murdered them. This morning there also appeared to me another
woman in a winding-sheet, and told me that she was goodman
Fuller’s first wife, and that Mr Burroughs killed her, because of
some difference between her husband and himself. The prisoner, on
the 9th of May, also, at his first examination, most grievously tor
mented and afflicted Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard,
and Abigail Williams, by pinching, pricking, and choking them.’
Elizabeth Hubbard said : ‘ One night there appeared to me a little
black-bearded man, in dark apparel, who told me his name was
27
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
Burroughs. He took a book out of his pocket, and bade me set my
hand to it. I refused. The lines in the book were as red as blood.
He then pinched me, and went away. He has often appeared to me
since, and threatened to kill me if I would not sign the book. He
tortured me very much by biting, pinching, and squeezing my body,
and running pins into me. At his first examination on 9th May, he
did most grievously afflict and torment the bodies of Mary Walcott,
Mercy Lewis, Anne Putnam, and Abigail Williams. If he did tyit
look upon them, he would strike them down, or almost choke them
to death. I believe in my heart that Mr George Burroughs is a
dreadful wizard.’
Other witnesses told similar stories, all so ridiculous, that it is
amazing how they should have been listened to by a court of justice.
The unfortunate prisoner said but little at his trial. He made some
attempt to explain away the testimony against him, but became
confused, and made contradictory statements. He also handed in
a paper to the jury, in which he utterly denied that there was any
truth in the received notions of witchcraft. The jury returned a
verdict of guilty, and he was sentenced to die.
On the 19th of August, he was carried in a cart through the
streets of Salem with the others who were to die. Upon the ladder
he made a calm and powerful address to the multitude, in which he
asserted his innocence ‘ with such solemn and serious expressions as
were to the admiration of all present.’ He then made a prayer,
concluding with the Lord’s Prayer, which he repeated in a clear,
sonorous tone, with entire exactness, and with a fervency that
astonished. Many were affected to tears, and it seemed as if the
spectators would hinder the execution. But the accusers cried that
the devil assisted him. The execution proceeded, and the husband,
the father, and the minister of God was violently sent to his long
home. Cotton Mather, on horseback in the crowd, addressed the
people, declaring that Burroughs was no ordained minister, insisted
on his guilt, and asserted that the devil had often been transformed
into an angel of light. When the body was cut down, it was dragged
by the halter to a hole, and there interred with every mark of
indignity.
A few weeks afterwards, fourteen persons of both sexes were tried,
condemned, and executed. One of these, Samuel Wardwell, had
confessed, and was safe ; but he retracted his confession, and was
executed—not for witchcraft, but for denying witchcraft. Another
victim, Martha Cory, protested her innocence to the last, and con
cluded her life with a prayer on the ladder. Her husband, Giles
Cory, an octogenarian, seeing that no one escaped—knowing that a
trial was but the form of convicting him of a felony, by which his
estate would be forfeited, refused to plead, and was condemned to
be pressed to death ; the only instance in which the horrible death
by the common-law judgment, for standing mute on arraignment,
28
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
has been inflicted in America. As the aged frame of the dying man
yielded to the dreadful pressure, his tongue protruded from his mouth,
•and the sheriff thrust it back again with the point of his cane !
The parting scene between Mary Easty and her husband, children,
and friends, is described as having been as serious, religious, dis
tinct, and affectionate as could well be expressed, drawing tears from
the eyes of almost all present. She was hanged with the others.
‘There hang eight firebrands of hell,’ said Noyes, the minister of
Salem, pointing to the bodies hanging on the gallows.
Although satisfactory to the malignant bigoted, these executions
did not meet with universal approbation. The atrocities were too
great to be endured, and served to raise a reaction against the
witchcraft delusion. ‘ The common mind of Massachusetts,’ observes
Chandler, ‘ more wise than those in authority and influence, became
concentrated against such monstrous proceedings, and jurors refused
to convict while the judicial-power was yet unsatisfied with victims.
Already twenty persons had suffered death ; more than fifty had
been tortured or terrified into confession ; the jails were full, and
hundreds were under suspicion. Where was this to end? More
over, the frauds and imposture attending these scenes began to be
apparent. It was observed, that no one of the condemned con
fessing witchcraft had been hanged ; no one who confessed and
retracted a confession escaped either hanging or imprisonment for
trial. Favouritism had been shewn in refusing to listen to accusa
tions which were directed against friends or partisans. Corrupt
means had been used to tempt people to become accusers, and
accusations began to be made against the most respectable inhabit
ants of the province and some ministers. It was also observed
that the trials were not fairly conducted: they were but a form to
condemn the accused. No one brought to the bar escaped, and all
who were cried out upon expected death. The wife of the wealthiest
person in Salem, a merchant, and a man of the highest respect
ability, being accused, the warrant was read to her in the evening in
her bed-chamber, and guards were placed round the house. In the
morning, she attended the devotions of her family, gave instructions
for the education of her children, kissed them, commended them
to God, bade them farewell, and committed herself to the sheriff,
declaring her readiness to die. Such a state of things could not
continue long in any age, whilst the essential elements of human
nature remain the same. No wonder the miserable creatures who
endured these sufferings felt that New England was indeed deserted
by God.’
The court made several attempts to go on with its trials, but the
grand-juries dismissed the cases, and the executions were accord
ingly stopped. ‘ The causes of this change in public opinion,’
proceeds our authority, ‘ are variously stated. Some attribute it to
the fact, that the wife of the minister of Beverly being accused, he
29
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
immediately changed his mind in regard to the propriety of the pro
secutions, and thenceforward opposed, as zealously as he had previ
ously encouraged them. Others relate that the wife of a gentleman
in Boston being accused, he brought an action for slander, claiming
a thousand pounds damages ; and that this turned back the current
of accusations. But such causes were inadequate to the effect.
These incidental facts were rather the result of the change that was
taking place, than the cause of it. The force of public sentiment,
which had hanged one minister, could scarcely have been resisted
by the efforts of another. An action at law, sounding in damages,
would hardly stop the mouths of accusing witnesses, who professed
to have given themselves to the powers of darkness. The cause of
the change is rather to be sought in the principles of our nature,
and is to be found partly in that instinctive effort for self-preserva
tion, which, in communities of individuals, unites the weak against
oppression, and gives courage to the feeble and unprotected. A
belief in witchcraft was one of the superstitions of the age ; and the
change of public sentiment, which now took place, was not so much
a loss of faith in its reality, as a conviction of the uselessness and
danger of punishing it by human laws. Of the causes of the tran
sient delusion, which rose so high, and terminated so fatally, among
the sober and godly people of N ew England, no definite explanation
can, at this distance of time, be given ; but their descendants may
be allowed, in the same spirit of trust in Providence which distin
guished them, to cherish the belief, that it was permitted for pur
poses of wisdom and benevolence, which could not otherwise have
been accomplished. When its work was done, it properly ceased.
Such moral desolations often pass over the face of society : the
thunder-storm does its work—the atmosphere becomes clear—the
sun shines forth, and reveals to all the work of death.
‘The change in the public mind was complete and universal.
Bitter was the lamentation of the whole community for the sad con
sequences of their rashness and delusion; contrite the repentance
of all who had been actors in the tragedy. The indignation of the
people, not loud, but deep and strong, was directed with resistless
force against those who had been particularly active in these insane
enormities. Parris, the minister who had been the chief agent in
these acts of frenzy and folly, and who, beyond all question, made
use of the popular feeling to gratify his own malignant feelings of
revenge against obnoxious individuals, was compelled to leave his
people. No entreaties were of any avail; the humblest confession
could not save him ; it was not fitting that he should minister at the
altar of a merciful God, within sight of the graves of those whose
entreaties for mercy he had despised. Noyes, the minister of Salem,
consecrated his life to deeds of mercy; made a full confession;
loved and blessed the survivors whom he had injured • asked for
giveness of all, and was by all forgiven. Cotton Mather, by artful
30
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
appeals and publications, in which he wilfully suppressed the truth,
succeeded for a while in deceiving the public, and perhaps himself,
as to the encouragement he had given to the proceedings at Salem.
Still eager “to lift up a standard against the infernal enemy,” he got
up a case of witchcraft in his own parish; but the imposture was
promptly exposed to ridicule, and came to nothing. Mather died in
1727; his latter years being imbittered by the contempt of many
persons for his frenzied zeal in the witch prosecutions ; and it would
appear that, before his death, he had occasional doubtings and
qualms of conscience on the same grave subject.’
The belief in witchcraft gradually died out in America, as it has
done in this country, and only lingered a clandestine existence
among the most ignorant in the community. Whether in England,
Wales, and Scotland, the belief is yet utterly gone, may perhaps
be doubted ; for paragraphs occasionally appear in the newspapers
descriptive of outrages committed on old women, who are supposed
by the ignorant to practise diabolical incantations. Within our own
recollection, which extends to the first decade of the present century,
a belief in witchcraft was to a certain degree entertained in a small
country town in Scotland. It was whispered about among children,
that a certain old woman was a witch, and in passing the thatched
cottage of this poor creature, we were instructed by companions to
put our thumb across one of our fingers, as a preservative from harm
—a curious relic of the old usage of making the figure of the cross.
As a crime recognised and punishable by law, witchcraft was
protracted till comparatively recent times in certain continental
countries. So lately as 1780, a woman was condemned and executed
for witchcraft in the Swiss canton of Glarus. In January 1853, an
account appeared in a foreign journal, significant of the superstitious
belief which still maintains its hold among the less-instructed classes
in the north of Italy; and with this strange record of witchcraft in
the nineteenth century, we may appropriately dismiss the subject:
‘A very singular case was a short time ago submitted to the Court
1 of Justice of Rovigo, in the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. Several
of the inhabitants of the island of Cherso had constructed a lime
kiln ; but the fire, after burning constantly for twelve days, and
thereby giving a promise that the operation would be a successful
. one, became suddenly extinguished, and all attempts to relight it
\ failed. An old woman, named Anna Gurlan, who was considered a
\sorceress, was immediately suspected of having, by her charms,
extinguished the fire, and it was stated that she.had been seen walking
ma mysterious way round the kiln, and had passed a night in an
aajacent house. On this the people to whom the kiln belonged
resolved that they would make the old woman undo her charm and
relight the fire. In compliance with the request of one of them,
Giuseppe Micich, she one morning went to the kiln, carrying with
her a bottle of holy water. She then began blessing the kiln and
31
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
reciting litanies. While so engaged, a priest went to her, and told
her that if she would remain until the fire should spring up again he
would pay her well. She asked if he thought she was a sorceress, or
possessed of heavenly powers ; and he answered, that she might
probably be more favoured by grace than he was. He then left her,
and she continued her incantations. But as the fire did not return,
Micich and his companions swore that they would kill and burn her
if she did not succeed ; and they assured her that they had an axe
and a furnace ready. At the same time, they heaped maledictions
on her for having, by her infernal arts, extinguished the fire. Greatly
terrified, she implored them to have pity on her, and, when a favour
able opportunity presented itself, she took to flight. The house to
which she went was closed against her, and Micich and his com
panions, having gone in pursuit, seized her with great brutality, and
threatened more violently than before to kill her if she would not put
an end to the charm. She then began reciting prayers, but as no
effect was produced, the men deliberated as to what they should do.
They at length resolved to consult a retired sea-captain, called the
“American,” from his having been to America, who possessed a
great reputation in the neighbourhood as an authority in matters of
witchcraft. He refused to go, lest, as he said, the sorceress should
bewitch his children, but he directed what should be done. In
execution of his instructions, the old woman was placed on a chair
close to the kiln ; Micich then cut off a piece of her garments and a
lock of her hair, and threw them both in the kiln, retaining, however,
a portion of the hair, which he placed in his pocket ; half an hour
was then allowed to elapse; Micich then took his knife and made
three cuts on her forehead, causing blood to flow abundantly ; then
another half-hour elapsed, and he made three cuts in the back part
of the head; then another half-hour was suffered to pass, and he
made three cuts in the cartilage of her left ear. While all this was
going on, she begged them, in the name of God, to kill her at once,
sooner than subject her to such torture. At length, when they had,
as she supposed, executed to the letter all the instructions of the
American, they ceased to hold her, and she fled to a wood, where she
wandered about all night. The next morning she went home ; but
the injuries she had sustained were such, that she was obliged to
keep her bed for twenty-six days. After the facts had been proved,
Micich, being called on by the court for his defence, gravely asserted
that the kiln had been burning well enough until the old woman had
been seen hanging about it; and he brought witnesses to prove that
she was fond of talking in a mysterious way, and of meddling in her
neighbours’ affairs ; that when she could not get what she wished
for, she was accustomed to make threats of death against adults and
children; and that more than once, chance apparently caused her
menaces to be fulfilled. The court condemned Micich to three
months’ imprisonment, and to pay an indemnity to the old woman.’
32
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The old witchcrafts
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 32 p. : ill. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "Probably extracted from The horror of New England witchcraft."--OCLC WorldCat. Date of publication from KVK (OCLC). Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1878?]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N515
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Unknown]
Subject
The topic of the resource
Witchcraft
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The old witchcrafts), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
NSS
Witchcraft